Activists tell Alcantara: We don’t want your IDC

Posted
Friday, May 5, 2017 12:01 am

Activists protest Marisol Alcantara’s membership in the Independent Democratic Conference outside of her district office in Inwood. The group, better known as the IDC, is a breakaway group of Democrats in the state senate that typically caucuses with the body’s Republicans.

Julius Constantine Motal

IDC and me

Friday’s protest in front of state Sen. Marisol Alcantara’s office is the most recent in a string of protests against the Independent Democratic Conference.

Throughout April, groups like Rise and Resist as well as Indivisible have staged demonstrations in front of the district offices of various IDC members, including state senators David Carlucci and Jose Peralta.

Protesters in front of Alcantara’s office Friday said the IDC — a breakaway group of Democrats that tends to caucus with Republicans — has become a major point of concern for them primarily because of the election of Donald Trump to the White House. The IDC, however, has functioned in Albany for nearly a decade.

The IDC, a group of eight breakaway Democrats in the state senate that currently holds an informal majority coalition with Republicans, has received renewed flack and attention since the election of President Donald Trump last year as some local activists have sought to remove any vestige of Republican control from Albany.

Those sentiments finally reached Alcantara’s district office last week when members of a number of different groups — including Indivisible, True Blue, and Rise and Resist — marched and chanted, while eight representatives were allowed to go upstairs for a meeting with the senator in her office.

“I’m hoping that Alcantara will drop out of the IDC,” protester Ettie Taichman said. “I’m hoping in this time of the Trump administration when we’re also nervous about the laws that he may pass and what he is doing — and that may pass down to New York State — we need to have a Democratic legislature.”

The IDC’s coalition with Republicans is not new, but many activists — especially those living in Alcantara’s district — are. The reason, according to demonstrator Steve Saporito, is many people don’t know what the IDC is.

“I have a friend who lives in the area,” he said. “She is very informed and active in politics. But the other day we were at dinner, I said to her, ‘Oh you live in an IDC district,’ and she didn’t even know what that meant.”

Alcantara won the 31st senate seat after Adriano Espaillat vacated it this past summer in his successful run for Congress. Espaillat quickly endorsed Alcantara after his historic primary win in June to replace Charles Rangel.

Despite Espaillat’s kingmaker play, Alcantara still needed help, according to James Scholtz. He’s a constituent who attended Friday’s protest, but only as an observer.

Earlier this year, Scholtz said he visited Alcantara in Albany where she told him the IDC was the only Democratic group willing to donate to her campaign, a sentiment she echoed in news reports after wining a four-way primary Sept. 13.

Instead of protesting the rookie senator, Scholtz opted to try and understand her reasons for joining the conference.

“I’m trying to figure out who the bad guy is, whether it’s the IDC itself or its members,” Scholtz said. “I’m not sure what her loyalty is to them besides money, which isn’t a good reason. But (I am) trying to find constructive ways of, one, working with and interacting with IDC members to get them to abandon the caucus, or remove them.”

But IDC members like state Sen. Jeffrey Klein, who founded the conference, says they aren’t the bad guys at all. Instead, he and his fellow members have been able to break a partisan mold in the state senate, pushing progressive policy issues through an otherwise gridlocked legislature.

“If I feel that we can’t continue to get the core things that we want to do in the Independent Democratic Conference, then yeah, I don’t think there should be an Independent Democratic Conference,” Klein told The Press on April 21. “Until then, I don’t see why we shouldn’t continue to try to govern.”

Comments

Given the current political climate we need INDEPENDENT voices more than ever. Partisan party politics are ruining the country.

Saturday, May 6

Democrap 4 life

I am sure if there is an investigation funding for these nut cases would be traced back to the Clinton "foundation" and Geo Sorro

Anything to disrupt productivity of parties working together for the betterment of all of us

My party right or wrong is starting to look a little old .

Four generations of welfare all sponsored by the democratic party, affirmative action, no idiot left behind, no pass or fail in schools , men wearing a skirt going into a girls room is ok with liberal democrats

Being a "citizens of the world" and "spreading the wealth" has more people on handouts in California then actually working

Gov. Jerry Brown being worse then Dinowitz and Engel combined gave the farm away in handouts to illegals and has very high unemployment and crime and had the gall to hire a Chinese company to build bridges as "American workers ear to much and it is better to have then unemployed"

Besides the Chinese company that received over a billion dollar contract can now give a "donation" to the party that awarded the contract

No corruption here as democratic members are are a s honest as the honorable Sheldon Silver and Mrs Clinton IMHO